Racing for a Road Course Win and a Cause

Ryan Newman has won 16 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races in his career.

Those 16 victories have come at 11 different racetracks. The 11-year Sprint Cup veteran has won at superspeedways and short tracks. He’s celebrated in victory lane at the high-banked ovals and flat tracks.

His wins have come on tracks that are .526-mile, .75-mile, 1 mile, 1.5 miles, 2 miles and 2.5 miles in length.

But there’s one type of track that’s missing on his resume of Sprint Cup victories. Newman has never taken the checkered flag at a road course in the Sprint Cup Series.

And the South Bend, Ind., native would like to change that stat this weekend as he heads to Sonoma, Calif., for the first of two road-course races during the 2012 season.

Newman and his team are looking forward to the 1.99-mile, 11-turn road circuit located in California’s Wine Country.

In 10 starts at Sonoma, Newman has two top-five and five top-10 finishes. He has completed all 1,105 laps contested there since his rookie campaign in 2002, and he even scored a runner-up finish in 2006. 

While Newman is focused on getting that elusive road-course victory, he will be racing with another purpose in mind this weekend – helping raise awareness and money for research for the Children’s Tumor Foundation, whose mission is to bring attention to Neurofibromatosis (NUro-FIbro-muh-TOE-sis), or NF, and the need to find a cure for this disorder. NF affects one in 3,000 children.

At Sonoma, Newman will pilot the No. 39 Quicken Loans/Children’s Tumor Foundation Chevrolet in hopes of raising money through donations to www.fuelthecure.org for the Children’s Tumor Foundation.

Newman’s sponsor, Quicken Loans, has a particularly close tie to the Children’s Tumor Foundation as Nick Gilbert, the 15-year-old son of company chairman and founder Dan Gilbert, has NF and is the national ambassador for the charity.

With 10 races to go to the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, Newman sits 13th in points, 138 out of first place. As a team fighting for a spot in this season’s Chase, Newman & Company hope to not only improve on their recent finishes at the Sonoma road course, but also contend for the win.

But while winning on a road course is an important item to check off the to-do list for Newman and the Quicken Loans team, nothing is more important to them than scoring a big win for children afflicted with NF, and raise awareness and funds for the foundation.

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